in any universe
by but seriously
Summary: Divorce isn't really an option when you're immortal. / SEQUEL to 'anthems for a seventeen-year-old girl' and 'park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor'.


1\. i've been making all sorts of bad decisions recently and one of them is posting this up after sitting and writing all 6,000 words of this story in one sitting whilst also being incredibly inebriated (how to spell?) and without even a second re-read (will probably do it now).

2\. this is a thirdquel (is this a word?) in the "broken social scene" universe, after (_1) anthems for a seventeen-year-old girl_ and _(2) park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor._

3\. pLEASE read those two first!

4\. this is for melissa, who is never not lovely.

* * *

**in any universe;**

.

.

"I'm home," Klaus announces unnecessarily into the kitchen, where she is, leaning over the island and studying a recipe for jalapeno parmesan-crusted grilled cheese (she really can't resist the pictures in Chrissy Teigen's cook book, old as it is now).

These days Klaus likes to announce his arrival to his home, especially since Caroline's just decided to move into it.

She thought she might as well give in, since half her stuff is at his place anyway, so it made packing easier.

Caroline senses it as soon as he walks into the doorless arch of the kitchen and tries not to show her distaste in her face. She still accepts the lofty kiss Klaus places on her forehead before heading for the coffee cabinet, and with even his back turned tries, really, she does.

They've been together for some years now and Klaus still doesn't know how to hide that look on his face that tells her _so much _of his latest exploits without having to goad about the least opportune moments – like over dinner, in the bath, or their nightly rehash of their day just before going to sleep, if they're too sleepy to get kinky ("Caroline sure has a way with words," Klaus would roll his eyes). She doesn't want to hear it. Hates that smug smirk of his. Hates that he's the kind of man who grins when he fights.

Hates that she's so attracted to it, still.

Klaus is moving with just that more of a bounce to his step as he busies himself making coffee, but the grind of the beans and the way it scents the air around them still can't overpower the unmistakable stench of blood about his shoulders.

Caroline can't help it. She wrinkles her nose _ever so slightly—_

But of course, Klaus notices, because he's always watching her from the corner of his eye, isn't he?

"You wouldn't understand the thrill of the hunt, sweetheart," Klaus says with a slight tease in his voice. He still voices his displeasure that she chooses to drink from blood bags most of the time instead of getting it fresh from a leaking neck. But he doesn't complain.

(Not much, anyway.)

"If you love it so much why don't you marry it," she mutters while turning a page of her book. She affects a tone of boredom; hopes it masks the scathe lingering beneath.

"Because I'd rather marry you," Klaus says pointedly, grabbing a mug from the stand. He waits for her reply.

A short "ha" is what he gets.

Klaus puts the mug back and turns to her fully. "I'm serious."

"_Ha_," she says again, more insistently now.

"Just say the word and we'll head to the nearest City Hall," Klaus says, already walking briskly out the kitchen, to get his coat she assumes.

"…Ha," she says, again, except this time it sounds like a question. There's a tiny squeak of desperation at the edge of her reply that she has to focus extra hard on her book because she knows her neck is getting red now. She's not even reading anymore, just staring unseeingly at the page.

Out the corner of her eye she spies Klaus, who has paused just outside the room, still looking at her.

_Oh what the hell_, argues that voice in her head, and she chances a full look at him.

Bad idea. He's scowling at her. In that way of his that says more of her stubbornness than her alleged petulance (Klaus can sure whine), he asks: "Why can't we be married?"

Caroline tries not to stare at Klaus.

She has never thought him as, like, _stupid _or anything, but never has there been a more perfect moment to call him that. Stupid. For even suggesting what she thinks he's suggesting. But Klaus looks like he's standing his ground, arms crossed and looking at her like he always looked at her: underneath human skin and vampire veins a frisson of something she can never understand. Equal parts wonder and exasperation. Some magic, some stardust, and a palmful of blood.

Maybe that's why she decides to humour him.

"Because, Klaus," Caroline says as patiently as she can, enunciating the consonants in his name so he pays attention, "we're vampires. You need a priest to be married, and a church. Vampires can't go into churches."

Klaus looks a bit surprised at her answer, but he hides it with a forced laugh. "Is that it?"

"Yeah," she shrugs.

"Says who?" Klaus asks.

"Excuse me?"

"_Vampires can't go into churches_," he repeats. "Says who?"

"Says the Vampire Manifesto, as recorded and written by the pen of one Stefan Salvatore?"

"You know that's more of his guilty conscience projecting—"

"So you're telling me if we just _waltz _into a church, talk up a priest, stand under magnificently holy stained glass and swear outselves to each other in the name of _Lord Jesus Christ _we will_not _burn to a crisp?"

"Want to test it with me?" Klaus grins, somehow wolfish and nervous all at the same time. "Marry me."

Caroline scrunches her face. "Are you sure, though?"

"Never been surer," Klaus says firmly. "You're a vampire now, you can take the bedding."

Caroline sighs and goes back to her recipe. "Just say sex like people of this century, Klaus."

"Ah, but we're not people," Klaus corrects. He starts finally to make his coffee. After a dump and a tip of the pot and a stir, he comes to join her at the island.

"What do you say, love?"

Caroline closes her book. "Yes. I'm going to get my dream wedding binder."

.

.

Eight-year-old Caroline had been ambitious, sure—

(as proven as how hard she had tried to get the likeness of Ryan Gosling under the sparkly purple signs that read _Mr. Caroline Forbes_.

After much studying of the drawing, Klaus deduces, "I'm much better-looking."

He makes her cross out Ryan Gosling's face and forces her to sketch him. It's horrible and will never measure up to anything Klaus can sketch of her in less time than she'd taken, but at least he is satisfied.)

-but she was nothing compared to the Jonathan ven Ness-levels of energy fifteen-year-old Caroline had put into her planning. The pages stopped right in the middle of the twelgth re-imagining of her future wedding dress.

"I moved to Mystic Falls," Caroline explains at Klaus' questioning look. "Planning took a back seat."

"I remember," Klaus says softly, trailing a finger at her half-finished sketch. "Let me help."

Caroline does what she's never let anyone do: hands him a pencil to organise an event with her.

Klaus leans over the page in the impressively-bulky binder and starts to work. He joins expert lines with her amateur one, adds lace and pearls between thin layers of sheer material, a high neck and a drooping back, sleeves that wrapped loosely around her wrists, and an unassuming train, which are all things Caroline doesn't expect but now cannot see herself in anything other than what Klaus had envisioned on her.

"It's very 1920s," she comments.

"My favourite decade," Klaus says, still drawing.

Caroline tilts her head as he quickly adds in a veil that stops just before her bouquet. He doesn't fill in the petals; he knows better than to make any assumptions about what flowers she might prefer.

He shades in the veil instead.

"You look magnificent as it is, the dress won't even do much," Klaus says kind of breathlessly as he adds finishing touches to the dress. He's sketching with the same fervour he gets when he wants to finish a secret drawing of her before she wakes up, when he thinks she's still sleeping.

"I still want to look pretty, Klaus."

"Oh, you will," Klaus promises. "More than. What do you think?"

He pushes the binder gently to her, as if he too knows to respect the sanctity of her wedding binder.

Caroline takes a proper look at it, while Klaus takes a look at her.

Caroline looks at the wedding dress, _her _wedding dress, that Klaus had drawn for her, and closes her eyes.

"It's perfect," she says quietly.

.

.

When Klaus had said, "You'll meet my family, of course. They're thrilled."

She had imagined them being thrilled.

She meets Henrik first, a week before their wedding. He sits in the armchair opposite hers and sips on the earl grey she'd made. He's so young, still twelve or something, so he seems to sink even deeper than the usual three inches people sink when they sit in that particular chair.

He manages to make it look dignified, though. Like a twelve-year-old Elijah, who she meets later.

But first, Henrik: "I just came back from the dead," he tells her sagely.

"Oh yeah." Caroline recalls Klaus telling her something like that, like a few weeks ago as he was shutting off his bedside lamp.

"It was difficult, but now only two covens want us gone," he continues.

"Oh?" Caroline asks. Klaus hadn't mentioned _that_ part.

"Oh yes," Henrik nods. "My siblings angered the witches when they pulled me from their newly renovated Other Side—"

-Caroline also recalls Elena telling her over lunch a few months ago that they'd managed to accidentally rip apart the Other Side, and Bonnie was like, the anchor, and Caroline had just nodded and finished her chicken salad like she was supposed to understand anything they all did—

"—rightly so, as I was just getting comfortable. Malivore didn't approve of my siblings' meddling either—"

"Of course," Caroline says seriously, while racking her brain – _Malivore? _Had Elena ever mentioned that?

"—but they negotiated a deal with Arcadius—"

"Cade!" Caroline yells triumphantly.

"—and now I am here," Henrik finishes.

"So, these witches," Caroline starts to ask, but then Klaus and – Kol, was it? – crash into the room, looking winded.

"What's going on?" she asks, mildly panicked as Klaus bundles her out the back door to where the garage is. Henrik sets down his teacup and follows dutifully.

"I'll tell you everything later," Klaus assures her. "Quickly, love."

"I do love a good car chase," Kol says dreamily as they slide into Klaus' sleek black Mercedes. "It's been ages."

"It's been never," Klaus corrects, starting the ignition. In the passenger side, Caroline buckles her seatbelt.

"Oh yes, I was _daggered_," Kol replies scathingly.

"Don't start now," Klaus grumbles as they speed out of the garage. Caroline grips the carseat.

"Fascinating," is all Henrik says.

.

.

"I'm sorry the circumstances of our meeting is as such," Elijah tells her when they finally meet, almost apologetic, but he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who sounds apologetic about anything, ever. If anything, Caroline feels like she's the one who should be apologising.

For her shoes, maybe.

They're nowhere near as shiny as his.

"We're on the run from witches," Elijah explains from the backseat. They're on the way to pick a sister named Rebekah up from her apartment downtown.

"That's great," Caroline says sarcastically. "Nice to finally meet you. Klaus tells me a lot of stories."

"Does he?" Elijah quirks a brow. "I imagine them quite colourful. But yes, Klaus speaks of you too, in the guarded way only he can. From the ten sentences he has told us about you I feel as though we are on speaking terms already."

Caroline has no doubt that he does. Klaus can be secretive, but boy are his sentences _loaded_. He's such a drama queen.

"Same," she tells Elijah.

The car screeches to a halt in front of an apartment complex that looks like it could actually be worthy of an Original.

"What took you so long?" asks a haughty tone when the passenger door is yanked open. The sister who must be Rebekah stares down at Caroline, clearly offended. "Someone's in my seat."

Klaus gestures an elegant hand Caroline's way. "Rebekah, meet my fiancé, Caroline."

"Caroline's in my seat," Rebekah tells him, ignoring Caroline.

"Kol's skinny enough. You'll fit in the back."

"Henrik has gotten fat in the afterlife – no offense, darling – so no, I will not be able to fit," scowls Rebekah. "Why should I give up my seat to some common girl?"

"Rebekah, I will leave you to the witches," Klaus grits.

"You know what, I'm good," Caroline says, unclipping her seatbelt. No way was she going to argue with a crazy bitch while some witches are flexing their fingers their way. "I'll Uber it."

"You will do no such thing," Klaus says in one spit. "Everyone needs to stay in the car."

"Actually, I might Uber it too?" Kol pipes up. "Whatever that is."

"Nobody is Ubering anywhere!"

"It is rather undignified for me to be carpooling, Niklaus—" Elijah weighs in. "I shall call for a car as well."

Rebekah pouts. "I feel left out."

"You can join my Uber ride, Bekah," Henrik offers graciously.

"Thank you, sweet one," Rebekah says, fondness in her eyes. It softens her features remarkably, and Caroline find she likes her more.

Klaus drags a hand down his face. "Fine! I'll send you the coordinates of the safehouse. _Try _not to get tailed."

Elijah's already shut the door.

"O-kay," Caroline says, as all of Klaus' siblings huddle around Elijah and his phone, which he'd just pulled out of the pocket of his smart, black suit. "Who am I riding with?"

.

.

The safehouse was Caroline's house.

"_Seriously?"_ she hisses. "No, mom, _do not make tea_."

"Really, Caroline," her mother says, affronted. She sets down their best tea set. "Klaus, I really didn't raise such a rude daughter."

"Liz, you've done a fine job," Klaus tells her reassuringly.

"Gag," Rebekah says, not even quietly. "Do you have any digestives?"

Caroline, who had learned to stock the shelves with Klaus' favourite biscuits, is sure they have some, but she's not about to tell Rebekah that. "_Why _are we all in my house? Also, don't you have another brother or something?"

Right on cue, the bell rings.

"Could you get that, honey?" Liz asks distractedly as she mulls over packets of tea. Caroline's not going to tell her to go for the orange-infused Ceylon that she and Klaus had picked up on their most recent trip to Sri Lanka either.

She sighs, highly doubting Klaus is going to give her an answer given how he's in the middle of breaking of Kol and Rebekah's squabble. Elijah is in the living room when she passes through. He's studying the silver dish that detailed the history of the Falls family since the inception of Mystic Falls, a Forbes heirloom. Henrik is flipping through a Brothers Grimm fairytale in a corner of the room.

Caroline opens the door.

"Good evening," the brother that must be Finn greets. "You must be Miss Caroline Forbes, my brother Niklaus' betrothed. I am Finnegan Mikaelson, at your service."

Caroline lets him bow his head to her hand before snatching it back. "Come in."

"This must be the house that the Bennet witch had spelled," Finn muses as he takes a step in.

"Wait, what?"

"It's true, sweetheart," Klaus appears behind them, shutting the door for her. "Your friend had your home protected when you started affiliating yourself with me."

"Oh," Caroline says, feeling a strange warmth in her chest. She hadn't though that Bonnie had thought they were _there _yet. "That's nice."

"And since the majority of the Bennet witches are after us, it seemed the time to take advantage," Klaus grins. "Only Bonnie can reverse it."

"Well, shit!" Caroline exclaims. "Then why are we here? Obviously she's going to do that."

Right on cue, the bell rings.

Frustrated, Caroline swings open the door. It's Bonnie. And Stefan. And Elena and Damon. Matt is there, too. Alaric, her history teacher who she'd learned was a _vampire hunter_, completed the throng.

"Tyler's on his way," Damon says as he shoulders past Klaus.

"Did you guys carpool or something?" Caroline asks in amazement.

"We Uber'd," Elena answers. "Can we come in?"

"Uh, I carpooled with Bonnie. Uber gets expensive," Matt says, walking in and looking for a place to hang his coat.

"I'm not going to put down the protection barrier," Bonnie says in lieu of a greeting. "We owe you that much, I guess, for keeping Klaus placid."

"Thanks," Caroline says uncertainly. As Stefan steps in, she calls to the kitchen, "Mom, how much tea did you make?"

.

.

Bonnie sits on the porch and chants something witchy, and wind blows everywhere around them.

"You sure she doesn't need more salt?" Rebekah asks, eyeing the circle of white drawn around Bonnie.

"Or more candles?" Kol sniffs distastefully. He'd been quite a good witch back on his pre-vampire days, apparently, and had preferred to be more efficient with his candles. "Five is more than enough, really."

"Is it working?" Elijah asks, accepting the biscuit Liz offers him. They're all on the porch. It's getting crowded.

Caroline and Elena are sitting on her swing. "What's happening now?" Caroline asks Elena as Stefan and Damon prowl around with Finn and Henrik, apparently out for any witch that might sneak near with a vial of blood or whatever.

"She's chanelling the power she buried in the foundation of your house to bargain with Qetsiyah," Elena whispers back. "They might grant the Originals pardon for stealing one of theirs."

"Who?"

"This really bodacious witch who was in love with Stefan's doppelganger," Damon calls from the lawn.

"Oh, that Silas guy?" Caroline asks. "Do a lot of things that don't involve Klaus actually happen around here?"

"It is Mystic Falls," Elena shrugs.

.

.

It takes a while.

Henrik and Klaus start swordfighting on the lawn.

Bonnie never stops chanting.

Caroline marvels at what everyone is doing, for _her_. She never thought she'd made any friends in Mystic Falls, but evidently she was wrong. _Evidently _her entire perception was wrong: that maybe friendship wasn't gossiping about the latest celebrities and splitting money for movie tickets. Maybe friendship was sporadically saving the day together, and being invited every so often to rituals that might result in one or all of their deaths, while also struggling to pass Calculus.

Of course, that had been years ago. Caroline was in NYU now. A few hours ago they were in Klaus' swanky brownhouse in the upper east side, and now their back on her childhood porch, battling an unknowable force together. Again.

She wonders if she'll ever truly leave Mystic Falls.

.

.

When the spell is done, everyone disperses as predicted, lingering just long enough to thank Liz for the tea.

"No problem." Liz waves. "Come by anytime."

"Oh, I will," Rebekah air kisses her. "The digestives were lovely."

"I'll see you at your wedding, brother," Elijah clasps Klaus' shoulder. "Congratulations."

Elijah kisses her knuckles before he makes his leave in the Uber Luxury Ride Plus he'd called.

Rebekah gives her a little nod, Kol wraps her up in an extravagant hug, Finn tips his hat (he wears hats), and Henrik gives her a small, uncertain smile.

Caroline smiles back.

Henrik's smile grows.

"Didn't I tell you, love?" Klaus purrs into her ear. "They are thrilled."

.

.

"Klaus, you were the villain in out story, but you've kept Caroline out of trouble," Liz peer sat her daughter over her cup of tea (they're still drinking tea on the porch). "Mostly."

Klaus bows his head magnanimously. "I do my best."

"Hello?" Caroline snaps. "I can take care of myself, thanks. Remember when Lucien came back to avenge the hand you'd chopped off?"

"Nobody needs to be reminded of that kidnapping scare, Caroline," Klaus says quickly. He's respectful enough of her mother not to use his various romantic nicknames he has for her, and weirdly enough, she feels that that's kind of sweet.

"She gets that from me," Liz says proudly.

Caroline feels a tear well up in her eye, mimicking Liz's. Her mother had never openly been so adoring. Like the mom she needed all her life. If Liz had been there more, maybe she wouldn't have felt so lonely, maybe she wouldn't have wanted so much to be a vampi—Caroline swallows.

No need to be bringing her thoughts _there_.

Whatever's happened, happened.

No use regretting anything in Mystic Falls. It's a whole 'nother level of being stuck.

"I never have to worry about her," Klaus lies straight to her mother's face. "She keeps herself quite safe, goes to all her classes."

"See?" Caroline prompts, and crosses her fingers under the table. Her mother doesn't have to know that she'd helped Klaus battle some creepy-faced revenge-thirsty newly-unsired hybrids last month. "No adventures. Just boring lectures."

"New York's not rife with the thrill of any kind of hunt, I'm afraid," Klaus says plaintively. "Nothing like Mystic Falls."

He looks at her.

She's gaping at him in disbelief, because she's just realised – after all this time.

Maybe her version of Klaus' hunting was just being with him, side by side, helping him through whatever monster of the week that plagued them 'cause Klaus is too much of an asshole not to piss off the New York vampire mafia, which he'd claimed he'd help found, but they refused to acknowledge it.

"Like your Marcel business in New Orleans?" Caroline says with an eyeroll.

"Mark my words, you'll believe me one day."

Well, she believed it allright when the Corleones sent a severed horse's head to Klaus' bed.

Again, not telling her mom that.

Anyway, back to her revelation: the thrill of the hunt. Maybe she was in it. Maybe she likes it just as much as Klaus.

"Nothing like Mystic Falls," she echoes.

Liz covers her hand with hers. There's a quiet, almost sad look in her eyes. "That's good."

.

.

Ever since Klaus had turned her, Caroline won't stop showing off her fangs.

Against the blue mirror of the pool she spies them flashing behind her lips like a secret, and she can't help but add a little bit more of a skip to her step. She easily sidesteps a root and all but somersaults over a fallen tree. Klaus had agreed to pay for her dancing lessons - when she fell enamoured for the ballet on a Moscow trip with, surprise, Klaus - and that was a good exercise at resisting the insistent drum of human blood, she too finds. Blood gets pumping quick when you're doing non-stop pirouettes.

She greets a branch with an arabesque. She imagines it a bar, extends her neck to accentuate her poise.

"Very lovely, Caroline."

Klaus is stood on a boulder behind her, grinning his wolf off.

Over the years he had grown less melodramatic – perhaps that was why he wasn't clapping her, slow but sharp. The way he's looking at her, he might as well have been.

"Found any elk yet?" she asks in a modest show of ignoring his compliment. Klaus' eyes glint. He knows she hears it perfectly in her ears, and she would probably repay him later, and how. Klaus knows this. Maybe that's why he's never tired her of flattery.

Klaus wasn't king of melodrama anymore, but he still makes a face at that, offended by the very idea of his mate _injecting_ her body with _nutrition-less ooze. _His words, verbatim. "No, love. And not for a lack of trying. It seems the forest is empty of them."

"Has Stefan finally depleted Mystic Falls' stock of fresh blood?"

"We've only been back here for two days. Stefan isn't that nimble," Klaus says dismissively. "And anyway love, animal blood doesn't count as fresh—"

"So let's find a human."

Klaus stops mid yet another monologue of why any kind of blood that wasn't a human's simply couldn't _compare_— "Surely not."

Caroline cocks her head and swings her toe around her in a perfect arc. "Why not?"

"You live here." He doesn't say, _You've made it your home. _

_They are your people, no matter how much you feel otherwise_, he doesn't say.

_You do not hunt relations,_ he doesn't say.

Caroline shudders at the thought of that. Of having had formed a _bond _with Mystic Falls, when five years ago her skin was crawling at the thought of withering away old and gray on her porch.

Her porch, that had been bustling with activity last night. Where everyone smiled, even Bonnie, even when Bonnie's nose was leaking with blood hugging her about her engagement ring she'd worn as a necklace around her neck.

"Congratulations," Bonnie says into her shoulder. "You made it out of here."

"Don't say that," Caroline whispers fiercely, surprising both of them.

Klaus is still waiting for her response.

"Maybe I've changed," Caroline challenges, but her airy façade melts away into one of pure satisfaction. "I'm a vampire now."

Klaus is before her in an instant. "Maybe so. But your rudiments are still the same. They're still the same. You're as amazing as you were as a human. The only human I've ever loved."

"You said love," Caroline says, delighted.

Klaus makes a face, _Eh?_ "I always call you that."

"Yeah, as a noun," she stresses. "Not as a verb. Say it again."

"Nah," Klaus pecks her lips. "Don't want you to get tired of it. I'll say it too much."

"Me, tired?" Caroline grins mischievously. _Never_, she doesn't say to him.

She looks into his eyes.

Never.

.

.

Kol was quickly making Caroline regret inviting him to the wedding, even if he _was_ Klaus's brother.

Kol's idea of a wedding gift is spectacularly mixing up her guest list and somehow intercepting the wedding cake and ordering chocolate instead of vanilla.

Caroline had remained patient – Klaus stopped looking her in the eye after a while and shuffled his feet whenever she barked at him – and now her patience was gone.

She's sitting in her wedding dress, the one stitched to life from Klaus' drawing, and she looked hot – Princess Grace of Monaco-hot, okay? – and her there are baby's breath in her hands instead of the White Gardenia Against Dark Green Foliage, Extra Large, Add to Cart, she'd wanted.

"What the fuck did you do to my bouquet?" she asks. She may have cursed, but she's not angry. Oh no, she is livid, but she's not about to smudge her makeup to afford him the facial expression. She pushes away from her vanity, quite calm if one considers the situation, and fixes him with a stare.

Kol does not fare well with silences. She knows him well enough by now, from the time on her porch. He'd been making jokes to break the tense silence all night, after the tea stopped becoming a comfort.

Kol stares back, or tries to.

She raises her chin. She's not backing down. She is marrying Klaus, after all.

Kol huffs, smirk sliding off his face to be replaced with a scowl. "I could sense Nik's taste taking influence over what you might have preferred the petals, and I thought I was doing you a favour - how could a sister of mine walk down the aisle with that monstrosity!"

Caroline takes a deep breath. She will not fall for his bait. As if Klaus would have been allowed an opinion of a single thing in the wedding preparation after he'd pleased her so much with the dress. She didn't want to be upstaged in a field she'd claimed as hers.

Also, if he'd had his way, he'd have wedded her privately, bedded her thoroughly, and tried his best to put some babies in her despite her very vampire body now not being able to. He'd enjoy the exercise nonetheless. Klaus didn't care a single hoot about what flowers she would be holding as she walks down the hall - as long as she was walking towards him. Everyone, yes, everyone in the guest list knows that.

"Get me my bouquet back."

"No."

"I will hit you, Kol. I don't care if we have to sit at the same table later. I will demolish you."

"With your pretty little painted nails?" Kol scoffs. "I don't think so. Consider this my wedding gift _delivered_."

Caroline hurls her (his!) bouquet at him. He catches it deftly, but not before the sharp point of a branch scratches his eye. He looks a bit impressed despite the pain.

Later, with her recovered bouquet back in hand she floats down the aisle towards Klaus, to reverent, too adoring of her to even smile. If Kol's right eye is watering slightly as he stands in a line next to his brother nobody would know it was from a small little thawing in his chest.

.

.

There's nothing but the sound of windchimes as she walks down the aisle.

Her heart feels almost too full as she is lulled towards Klaus, the chiming strong yet gentle at the same time ringing in her ears. The pews gaze in captive silence. Liz, walking her down the aisle, can't keep her eyes off her daughter's face

The daughter that she is giving away to a retired serial killer.

Caroline can almost laugh, if the beautiful irony of her circumstances didn't have such a chokehold on her throat.

Liz kisses her, long and laden with meanings Caroline can never understand because she isn't a mother, and gives her to Klaus.

Klaus bows his back, eternally grateful. Liz smiles wetly at him.

And then Klaus turns his blue, blue eyes to Caroline.

They're always filled with some sort of feeling, but it's so overwhelming now. The blue in his eye shifts until she can't find them anymore in the gaze he's holding her in. It was a gaze she isn't accustomed to. To be looked at so reverently, so adoringly.

"Are you burning, love?" Klaus asks, only for her ears.

"I am," she whispers back, "but in a good way. Myth busted."

"Let's debunk every myth ever, sweetheart," Klaus says in place of a vow.

"Let's," she says in place of hers.

.

.

_You have declared your consent as such before the Church. God save you_.

"Amen," says Klaus solemnly.

Caroline is afraid to find that she's hoping fervently for that to be the case.

.

.

It's not an hour later and she's already decked Kol. In front of everyone. In the middle of her first dance as a married union with Klaus.

Kol looks up at her, angry and shocked and proud and even a little turned on. Klaus doesn't look bothered at all about the look considering he's now her husband or whatever, which she thinks. Weird. And Inappropriate. And weird.

The look Kol's giving her, of course. Not the part about him being her husband now, bond by holy matrimony. In a church. Before a priest. Bathed in the afternoon light dancing down from the great stained glass structure above them. She'd let Klaus choose the venue. He'd chosen a five-hundred-year old church, as if to prove a point about her theories of vampire-burning, and that he was better at venues than her.

She'll concede the second part.

The first: well, she's not burning, all right.

Kol looks at her like he might devour her or congratulate him. Caroline looks back, her recovered bouquet wielded like a weapon she's not afraid to kill him twice with.

She'd kill him, oh yes, because he'd just dropped _pigs blood _on _Elena and Matt, _who'd just joined the dancefloor after an appropriate amount of time looking at Klaus and Caroline dancing.

"It was supposed to be you!" Kol smacks his forehead like he'd made a huge mistake when Elena and Matt scream their discomfort.

Klaus would just have to let her do it. Klaus wouldn't mind after a few years of sulking, she's sure. He'll forgive her. And if he doesn't – well… It's not like Klaus would _divorce _her or anything.

Divorce isn't really an option when you're immortal.

.

.

"I think Kol's been reminded how much of a prat he is even without you chaining him up, sweetheart," Klaus says as he's unlacing her corset.

"Alaric owed me a wedding present. All I did was claim it."

"I think Kol would've enjoyed the cake, all the same," Klaus says, before pulling the strings binding the view of her torso away from him with his teeth so he can use both hands to rip at – more string!, he groans.

"Ha," is all Caroline can say, because Klaus' breath is hot on her neck. She looks at her reflection in the full-length mirror. She has her hands on their bedpost whilst Klaus tries to help her escape the constricting hug of the corset as best as he can. It had taken Bonnie, Elena _and _a passing hotel staff to string her up in the first place.

God, she so doesn't mind not being alive a century ago for the corsets.

"Does it remind you of being young again?" she gestures at his hands busy working the strings.

"Oh, I definitely don't need a reminder," Klaus grunts.

"Were you that much a casanova?" Caroline asks, reproached.

"Who, me?" Klaus asks, wide-eyed. Caroline lets it slide.

"I'm a vampire, I can just rip right through this," Caroline mumbles, studying her reflection.

"I don't need a reminder of _that _either."

Aside from hunting together (or coaxing Klaus into accompanying her for her snack time, arms crossed obstinately, whilst she pounces on a rabbit and misses), Caroline also enjoys goading him into bed. She makes it worth his while every time.

In his bed she nips and bites at his neck with her new teeth, marvelling at how they don't even seem to pierce the surface of his skin. She kisses him, still with her fangs drawn, she likes the danger of the near-bite. If Klaus hadn't been needled into turning her for the better part of a year, he would have rolled his eyes affectionately.

As it is, this is taking too much of a while, and he's not sure it's worth preserving her bridal innerwear.

With a sigh and a confirming nod from Caroline, he takes one finger down and rips the rest of the strings down the middle. Her corset falls away, revealing her slip. Caroline takes her first real breath of the night. "Thanks, husband."

"You're welcome." Klaus smiles, trying out the word on his tongue: "Wife."

There's nowhere especially romantic left to honeymoon on account of all the trips he'd accosted her with in her Senior Year, so they're in his New York brownhouse. The most romantic place in the world, she doesn't tell him, or his head would explode.

Klaus kisses her almost experimentally. He's still in his shirt, it's still tucked into his trousers, but she'd tugged his bowtie off earlier. Now she untucks his shirt and presses her palms onto his stomach.

"Don't take off my slip yet," she mumbles against the insistent kiss of his lips. "Not yet, Klaus – Klaus, are you listening?"

"Love, I hang onto everything you say," Klaus says, eyes closed, hands busy pushing down the thin straps of her slip. "I want to write down every word."

"Klaus," she whines, but she should've known he'd be turned on by it.

"Time for bed," Klaus says, and hoists her thighs around his waist; her back hits soft sheets and she's not _complaining _or anything, but can't her ever let her get her way when they're not three feet away from his bed?

"You should try a thing called patience every once in a while," she grumbles.

"Nah," Klaus says, fully divesting her of her slip and swoops down to kiss her stomach. "You're too much."

"Glad I'm enough for you to begin with," she says without thinking.

Klaus stills. With his hands framed around her, he looks up—oh, he looks up and it's _everything_, everything in any universe anything could offer, and she still will never be full from it.

"Always, sweetheart," Klaus says like he's swearing himself to her. "You're always enough."

She gives him a kiss to thank him, which he deepens, and in no time they're redefining the word _enough_ with their warm bodies.

.

.

Caroline will never admit it, but it's in Klaus' bed is when she likes to exercise her newfound stamina the most.

The woods has never had her heart pumping like this, even in a heated hunt for deer.

She pours everything she has into Klaus, every thrust and every pant she gives over to him. Klaus fills her up with himself too, strictly in a metaphorical sense – no, not yet, she laughs – and in a tangle they still manage to look into each other's eyes. Caroline presses her forehead into his until it hurts.

"'Til death do us part," she says, immediately hating herself for the cliché, but hey if it isn't true.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Klaus replies, his voice drying up when Caroline swivels her hips.

After, when Klaus lies panting on his back with a dumbfounded look on his face, she says, "Now, aren't you glad you turned me?"

Klaus pinches her nose lightly. "Cheeky." But there's a wistfulness in his eyes, too.

.

.

That they had gotten married is a given.

As for whether they'll live and love happily ever after—

Caroline looks up from her book and stares out the window at the late spring afternoon, fifty years old, while Klaus, a thousand-and-fifty years old, paints her quietly. Music tinkles in the air. There are adoption forms for a pair of recently-orphaned siphoner twins hidden away in the house somewhere, neither of them are ready for the conversation yet, but the forms are there.

Caroline keeps looking out of the window, lost in the tintinnabulation and ting-a-ling of windchimes, and gets a faraway look in her eyes—

Happily ever after. What a notion.

As for that - What do you think?

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_fin_

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_fin_

* * *

1\. i shamelessly lifted a beautiful line from the strokes' latest single BAD DECISIONS; "Oh baby, I hang on everything you say / I wanna write down every word"

2\. title is from young the giant's "superposition" which was on repeat whilst i wrote this (bad decisions was on repeat too).

3\. this series is very close to my heart, and i feel like there was no other way it could have ended except klaus and caroline being hideously in love in a permanent sort of way.

4\. sorry for the self-indulgent fluff.

what do you think? please leave a comment!


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